Crossing the Andes on Horseback

A photo essay from Mendoza, Argentina to Santiago, Chile.

A horse and rider make their way up to Portillo pass high in the Argentine Andes. Photo: Nicholas Gill.

The day before, in the Uco Valley outside of Mendoza, Argentina where this horse trek across the Andes would begin, the sky was clear blue. During the nights for the past week, Mendoza had seen more rain than was typical for an entire year. Hail bombs went off into the night to protect the vineyards. Yet that day there were crystal clear views of the snow capped Andean peaks that divided Argentina and Chile.

The next morning as we set off up the mountains the rain came down like a thick, insufferable blanket and the clouds were as grey as a Patagonian fox. The mountains had disappeared and the path before us, an old arrieros trail, the same one through the Portillo Pass traversed by General José de San Martín in 1817 to attack the Spanish forces in Peru from the South, and Charles Darwin in 1835 during the voyage of the Beagle, was obscured.

The horses trudged slowly up the path as rain poured harder and harder and wind came hurling down at us from above like a steel locomotive. By the time we reached the first camp, supposedly to be a short two-hour trek that turned into five, it was already covered in a thin layer of snow. Normally in this time of year you would be more likely to get sunburn than frostbite. This was just a freak storm that we would just have to wait out.